CAREGIVER TO A TBI VET — Hidden Heroes and the long slow work of staying

My husband was an Army turret gunner in Iraq. IED in 2008. Severe TBI. He was 24. I was 22. We had been married for nine months. He came home seven months later from Walter Reed. He could walk. He could talk in short sentences. He could not hold a job. He could not always remember what year it was. He had seizures three times a year for the first decade. I have been his full-time caregiver for seventeen years. I left a nursing program to do it. I get paid through the VA's Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers, which I had to fight for twice during VA program changes. The Elizabeth Dole Foundation's Hidden Heroes program has been the closest thing I have had to a community. I am 39 now. He is 41. We do not have children. We had to decide not to. I will not pretend that has not been a grief of its own. What Hidden Heroes did for me was give me a peer group of other caregivers. Twelve of us, weekly, on Zoom. Some caregiving for veterans with TBI, some for spinal cord injuries, some for severe PTSD, some for veterans on the spectrum of post-service decline that does not get a single diagnosis. The work we do is invisible. The community is the only place it is not invisible. I am writing this in case there is another caregiver reading. You are not crazy. The work is real. The work is not seen by most of the world. Hidden Heroes will see it. Call them.